Carbide Tipped Pens Part 29

Her memories started slipping away, but she tried holding on to them. There were two lakes. She couldn't move her cameras, but the mast was still pointed at the lake. She looked. Was something moving under the surface? The surface of what? Why was she doing this? Why was she listening to this song instead of singing for herself? Why wasn't she trying to find the lake? Trying to find the source. The spring. She was in a streambed. Uphill to the spring.

She felt her memories slip away, even the data she had been storing melted and was gone. The lake. Was something moving under the surface? She couldn't move her cameras to get a better view, to record. Lost. Must ... must ... must ... must find the source, the spring. Must head up the stream.

SIREN swiveled the camera mast up and started climbing the stream to find the source. It was what she had to do. The spring was her task. She obeyed.

THE YOKE OF INAUSPICIOUS STARS.

Kate Story

The essence of tragedy is that it is inevitable. You know how painful the end will be, but you also know that this is the only way the story can end. In death.

But before the end, there is the story itself. A story of love and yearning, a story of conflict and violence.

To all this Kate Story (how aptly named!) has added a new dimension, a factor that only science fiction can provide. The story is set on Europa, that frozen moon of the giant planet Jupiter. Europa, and the life it harbors, deepens this tale of love and tragedy beyond what even Shakespeare could have contemplated.

Downtime between shifts at the mine, Paris touches the connection under the skin of his forearm. Skipping over Earth news, he scans Nurse for local gossip. His training session with Jewel is already dominating the newsfeed.

Jewel has not friended him.

Tybalt managed to record their not-so-witty verbal exchanges and put that up too, merry prankster.

A couple of Montys have made rude remarks.

Paris blocks them. Updates his status.

Going to the Only for a drink. One pain cures another LOFL.

He goes to the Only.

An hour later on Earth, a thousand of his followers like this. An hour after that, the likes show up on Paris's feed.

There's only one bar on Europa. One drinking hole, one gathering place. The usual suspects line up: Lady and her husband, old-timers, first-wave miners; Buddy draped over Nance's big rack like a cat on clean laundry; Tybalt and his man.

h.e.l.lo, they all say.

Barkeep Larry greets Paris with his drink of choice.

Everyone's been very careful of Paris since the accident. The intensity of the link between miner and technician is like a binary star system, a deep-s.p.a.ce orbit, heat in the cold and black. But for all that Paris wasn't able to save Billy. He should have ... he could have ...

Acute radiation poisoning: vomiting, cell failure, unconsciousness, death.

The guilt is a constant gnawing inside of him that only another drink will fix. That or a good f.u.c.k, but no, Jewel hasn't shown.

Jewel has only just arrived on Europa. Paris attended his new miner as she came out of cryo. "Greetings, Earthling." She hadn't laughed.

He sits at the bar, mentally reviewing their first session: Jewel running through her paces out on the surface, him safe beneath the ice in the technician room. Trying to impress her.

"Prince is the man. If you like to quaff a cup, don't p.i.s.s him off."

She hadn't responded. Paris watched her work, made adjustments to the settings.

"Unless you've sworn to live chaste?"

Nothing.

"You like to party?"

Jewel laughed, crackling in his earpiece. Finally, a laugh. "I'm a miner."

He'd made a final adjustment to Jewel's connection. The sensation made her writhe a bit, which was so attractive that Paris had to hold back from making a further adjustment. Only the necessary. That's his job.

She is good, the best, the fastest and cleanest of them all. Plug her in and she will complete any maneuver better than anyone out here. The Caps are lucky to have recruited her-right out from under Monty's nose too, from what Paris hears.

"What's it called."

She has a strangely uninflected voice, especially for a young woman. It makes it hard to know sometimes that she is asking a question.

"What's what called?"

"The bar."

"The Only. As in, bar on Europa."

Jewel leapt and spun, drilling, scooping ice. It was all Paris could do to keep up with her.

Barkeep Larry senses the disturbance in the force before Paris even raises his hand, and another whiskey flies down the bar.

Good man, Barkeep Larry.

"Pretty Paris, you made a mama out of that new miner yet?"

Paris takes in the taunter: Mercury, that little bantam. Yup, the Montys have staked out their usual territory at the end of the bar. Mercury, Ben, the old guy who calls himself Lord, full crew. Excepting that new guy who's single-handedly upping their take-Rudo-he's not there.

Paris has never liked them. Fight-starters, talkative warriors.

"Shut up, Mercury."

Mercury lifts his eyebrows. "So few words, Parisian wit? Couple them with something; make it three words and a blow." Mercury jerks his hips.

Monty is a man-only enterprise. The corporation strictly enforces "traditional" morals, the owners being descended from some pre-war Catholic offshoot.

Men only, and no h.o.m.o s.e.x allowed. No wonder they start fights.

Paris and Billy used to be the subject of Mercury's taunts; when Billy bought it, Mercury nicknamed Paris "f.a.ggot widow."

Tybalt, loyal wingman, was barred from the Only for three weeks for starting the fight that followed.

And now, Tybalt struts down the bar like a drag queen in heat, fists tensing. "Mercury, you heartless hind."

Barkeep Larry kills the music. "Part, fools!"

Everyone freezes.

That's when Jewel floats in.

Every eye on her, tense silence; it doesn't faze her one bit. Slinking through the door, hitching her amazing a.s.s up on a stool, leaning her amazing shelf on the top of the bar.

"Water, please," to Larry.

Who slowly, never taking his eyes from hers, pours a sparkling gla.s.s of Europa's finest.

Jewel downs it. c.o.c.ks her arm. Throws the gla.s.s at the wall.

Shards spin out in all directions.

The spell is broken. Mercury leaps-Tybalt launches-they grapple and the whole place goes mad.

Paris seizes the opportunity to throw himself on top of Jewel, but she shoves him off.

Fighting in low-g is fun, but potentially just as damaging as fighting on Earth. A punch is still ma.s.s times acceleration. People still bleed. Jewel's stunt with her drinking gla.s.s created more than a few shards, and by G.o.d, Tybalt and Mercury are trying to get ahold of them.

Paris sees Ben from the Monty side, trying to separate the two warmongers. "Part, fools!"

"Look upon your own death!" Tybalt growls.

"I'm trying to keep the peace."

Mercury spits in Tybalt's face.

"Peace?" Tybalt roars. "I hate the word! As I hate h.e.l.l, all Montys, and you!"

And then he's after Mercury and Ben both.

Paris launches in-gotta help the man.

Lady's husband is trying to fight and Lady's holding him back.

Larry's shouting and banging on the bar with a good old-fashioned baseball bat.

And then the ceiling hatch opens and Prince drops onto the bar top.

Big guy, Prince.

And a bit of a mystery about him. How has he the monopoly on all Europaean entertainment? He must have something on the corporate leaders back home, that's the rumor. Or he works for them both. Or the whole Europaean project is some hypermonitored social experiment set within a hypercombative environment. Thus providing a distraction from the oppressive political realities at home, and ... That's what the conspiracy theorists say.

Whatever. Prince is a big guy and he runs the only bar on this moon. When he yells, which is rarely, the air shakes. "Yo!"

Eyes battle-l.u.s.ted, faces contorted, hands itching to strangle, but they hear and they stop.

"Are you human, or beasts?" Prince's intonation is smooth, like that old pre-war star Barry White. "What quenches the fire of your pernicious rage? Fountains of purple issuing from your veins?" Everyone looks down. Feet shuffle. "I am gonna chew your a.s.s off!"

His eye is as baleful as Jupiter's Red Storm over the breathless crowd.

"One more brawl, and you're done. Finished. Got that?"

Murmurs. Nods. Glares, swiftly hooded.

Prince looks to Larry. "Keep things quiet."

With a smooth one-handed pull-up he disappears back through his ceiling hatch.

Larry glares around. "You got that?"

They got that.

Jewel, her eyes are shining. She liked the fight, Paris thinks. She wants some more.

A week goes by. Jewel more than lives up to her name. The Caps' yield increases twenty-five percent.

The Montys are furious.

Comments fly across the Nurse. On Earth people follow various miners, bet on yields, take sides. Being a miner is a ticket to super-stardom. It almost makes up for the super-good chances of dying on this super-dangerous job.

The corporations feed each miner propaganda about how lousy and evil the other company is. Give each miner a gold insignia ring engraved with their own name, encouraging corporate identification. Cap and Monty are, ultimately, indistinguishable, all part of the same military-industrial complex that screwed the Earth to begin with, say the conspiracy theorists.